A HOLDEN Commodore VE V8 Supercar dressed in Holden Racing Team colours made an appearance at the 2022 Goodwood Festival of Speed as a last-minute substitute.
Owned by Brit Ric Wood, (who also campaigns it in British Thunder Saloon races), this car is a genuine Walkinshaw Racing-built VE V8 Supercar but never raced as a HRT entry.
This Commodore is WR 008 and was debuted by Rick Kelly as a HSV Dealer Team Commodore midway through the 2008 season.
A major crash in practice at the Bathurst 1000 with co-driver Paul Radisich at the wheel meant it missed the Great Race and three subsequent rounds.
It returned at the Oran Park season finale, where Kelly used it to win the last-ever V8 Supercar race at Oran Park, which was also the 2006 champion’s last as part of the Walkinshaw stable.
It spent the next two seasons in Walkinshaw’s new Bundaberg Racing operation, driven in 2009 by rookie David Reynolds (and co-driven by Brit Andy Priaulx in the two endurance races).
Andrew Thompson took over the car in 2010 and had three different co-drivers – Nick Percat (Phillip Island, making his main game debut), Ryan Briscoe (Bathurst) and Mika Salo (under the new Gold Coast 600 format).
Walkinshaw scaled back its Bundaberg team to one car for 2011 and this car was sold mid-year to Brad Jones Racing for Karl Reindler, whose previous chassis was all-but-destroyed at Barbagallo.
Fabian Coulthard raced WR 008 in Lockwood colours during its last main game season in 2012, before BJR fielded it for Chris Pither (2013/14) and Josh Kean (2015) in subsequent Dunlop Series seasons.
It was purchased in 2018 by Wood and shipped to the UK, presented as a 2010 Garth Tander HRT Commodore.
Wood’s team entered two self-built cars for the 2022 Goodwood event; a Group A Nissan Skyline GT-R and a Group 5 Zakspeed Ford Capri.
However, mechanical trouble with the Capri meant the Commodore got the call-up for the final two days, giving the British public another taste of Aussie V8 power!
Check out video of the car in action at the 2021 Goodwood Festival of Speed below
Raucous Holden V8 Supercars machine fires up the Hill! #FOS #GW_McLaren
— Goodwood FOS (@fosgoodwood) July 11, 2021
Click the link below to watch FOS 2021 livehttps://t.co/boTOSymn6E pic.twitter.com/ISgWj0HNa9
